All posts from April, 2006

Eliot Spitzer once again demonstrates the super-lawyer powers that will probably win him Governor of New York later this year. He’s leading a pack of 10 states (plus NYC, DC and the Sierra Club) in a lawsuit against the EPA over Global Warming. The charge is that since coal-burning power plants generate 40% of current greenhouse emissions, the gov’t should step in and reglulate. (Apparently a similar case was lost last year.) The EPA’s defense is that they don’t have the authority to regulate emissions (which kinda makes them sound more like the Coal-Burning Power Plant Protection Agency.) I’m just surprised that I didn’t hear about this in the local news, since both my state and city are involved.

I worry about how this will play out in the rest of the country; will it be seen as just another radical “blue state” stunt? Considering that Time Magazine thinks 80% of Americans believe global warming is real, it could go either way.

Interesting little article that claims the difference in net carbon emissions between a meat-based and plant-based diet is about the same as that between an SUV and a standard car. The math seems a little simplistic but it’s probably not far from the truth. I really like meat, though– what I am driving if I only eat it once a week? A minivan? (By this logic, I guess Vegans are all driving hybrids.)

You know, as much as Governor Pataki’s social and fiscal policies can get on my nerves, his environmental policies are right on the money:

With gas costing $3 a gallon in many parts of the country and much of the oil producing world in turmoil, the lure of homegrown fuel is a powerful one. Gov. George E. Pataki is intent on making the state the vanguard of ethanol production in the Northeast, and the Fulton plant is one of the projects in the region that is closest to fruition. Plant That Brewed Beer Shifts Attention to Ethanol – New York Times

Right now most of the ethanol production in the US is happening in the Midwest, because ethanol can be distilled from corn, and that’s where corn is grown. The Fulton plant, however, is expected to distill ethanol from byproducts of the nearby Ticonderoga paper factory. Gas has been sold for years containing 10% ethanol, replacing a similar chemical, MTBE, which is harmful to humans. E-85 is a new fuel, containing 85% ethanol and only 15% gasoline, although only very new cars can burn it (so-called “flex fuel” cars can burn either standard gasoline or E-85.) Pataki’s dream is to make E-85 a standard part of fuel sales in the Northeast. Some states have laws banning “alternative fuels” like E-85, but these laws are expected to disappear quickly over the next few years.

Increasing the alternative fuel supply… recycling industrial waste to make fuel… creating new jobs… this seems to be a win-win situation. I wonder what the “catch” is?

… Margie is impressed by the promise of free gifts but her purse-carrying friend, who is either male or female (I have it narrowed down to THOSE TWO POSSIBILITIES) scoffs. Being either a butch female or an effeminate male in the 70s and receiving the abusive treatment society has for those who are different, he or she has become jaded, cynical and disbelieving that humanity could have anything good to offer for free.

Yet another archive of something awful from the past with clever commentary (I’m hooked) at Stupid Comics.

I never really had an opinon of Giuliani, because I moved here to NYC only a few weeks before his term ended… but this article pretty much sums up what everone here’s been saying about him:

On Tuesday, Giuliani appeared at a rally for U.S. senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a vocal opponent of gay rights, who has said that states should regulate homosexuality “the same as they regulate human sexual contact with animals.” Giuliani said of Santorum, “In any age you don’t have many leaders. Senator Santorum is one of them.”  Giuliani cozies up to antigay leaders | News | Advocate.com

Question for Santorum: doesn’t “regulate” usually mean “tolerate certain amounts of”?  Exactly how much “human sexual contact with animals” are you willing to tolerate (wait, don’t answer.)

Did the Indian guy have to do sex over smoke signals? Just askin’.

Apparently afraid that his title of World’s Geekiest Man is in dispute, Bill Gates impresses upon us the teh awesome h4x0r power of his three screen computer. That’s right, folks, the richest man in North America doesn’t just get one Blue Screen of Death, he gets three. Or as Bill himself explains in exquisitely boring detail:

The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I’m reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I’m working on something, and to bring up a link that’s related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me.

What, no fourth screen for hot pr0n?! Also, for anyone who hasn’t used a computer any time in the past 10 years (but yet is somehow reading CNN.com,) Bill explains what an “in-box rule” is (you can practically see him air-quoting as you read it!)

I also find it sad that Bill’s encouraging people to blow big bucks on three flat-screen monitors (and, one assumes, the 10 feet of desk space needed to hold them all) when the competition offers a way to do that with one monitor… for free.

Now Mac users can enjoy what Windows users have had for so long…

…so you better watch out.

BoingBoing reports on a 77-year old burger shack in West Lafayette, Indiana.  One of the menu items is the “Duane Purvis All-American — a hamburger with peanut butter on the bun.”  Back when I was a kid, I would sometimes hang out with my Grandfather at his jewelry store in Meadville, PA.  On Thursday nights, I would run around the corner to pick up our dinner– a burger for me, a burger with peanut butter for him.  Only, they called it a “Kerrburger,” because my Grandpa Kerr was the only person who ever ordered it.
Boing Boing: Yet another ’50s kitsch restaurant called “XXX”